“One hundred days” to put both feet back in the political arena. “One hundred days” to increase travel, announcements, and take out the checkbook. But above all, before – perhaps – kicking off a new phase of his five-year term on July 14, Emmanuel Macron gave himself “a hundred days” to reconnect with the French. During the interminable sequence of retreats, there is an observation that his anxious troops have repeatedly rehashed, summarized by an experienced ministerial adviser: “We spoke to ourselves, we spoke to the unions, we spoke to LR , but we stopped talking to people. Talking about people.” And the Head of State has long understood that coming down to Earth, in contact and within reach of slaps, followed by on-board cameras, would not be enough.
Admittedly, the President of the Republic has got back into the saddle by riding his favorite horse, the economy, on which he is most at ease, has the most results, and which allows him to crystallize his electorate. Fight against unemployment, attractiveness, reindustrialization… Faced with the “lies”, he says, of the oppositions, macronism always wants to be the self-claimed party of constancy and rationality. But for several weeks now, Emmanuel Macron wants to cast a wider net. Alongside the curves and indicators, he chooses guts. Frustrations and anger that they consider deeply rooted in the belly and the psyche of the French.
Many of his interlocutors, ministers, parliamentarians, report to him what they hear on the markets, in their office hours, through their relays in public opinion: exasperation in the face of the profiteers of the “system”, a certain anxiety engendered by values - work, good citizenship – which would wither away. His May 23 lunch with four intellectuals – revealed by The world – reinforced him in his direction: the pollster Jérôme Fourquet warned him against “tensions in all segments of society”. “It’s the truth, so why wouldn’t we go in the direction of the people?” Slips the deputy Éric Woerth on this subject. Understand: this is rare enough, especially lately, not to deprive yourself of it.
“Eric Zemmour did not make 8% for nothing”
It is therefore no coincidence that Gabriel Attal has free rein to tackle social (and tax) fraud, or if Macronie is increasingly questioning the merits of the RSA in its current form. . Even less when the head of state endorses the expression of “decivilization” after the death of a stabbed nurse in Reims, that of three young police officers in their car in the North, and the fire of the house of the mayor of Saint-Brévin, even though these three dramas have nothing in common.
“Decivilization, it speaks to the French, explained a Macronist leader the day after the exit of the president in the Council of Ministers. Éric Zemmour did not make 8% in the presidential election for nothing: there is a breeding ground, it is a term that encompasses many social and societal concerns in people’s lives.”
Triangulation, change of strategy, or software for Emmanuel Macron? This Friday, June 2, with the possible questioning of the French rating by Standard & Poor’s, the economic and financial reality risks catching up with it. A sign that the time has come to change gear?